Self-Service BI

My 2010 Wake Up Call Eight years ago, I lucked into an epiphany: IT-driven BI was going to give way to biz-driven BI (aka “self-service” or “Agile” BI). The new wave of BI tools – led by Power Pivot at…

A CIA Manual for Inaction Perhaps you’ve seen this making the rounds on Facebook: in the 1940’s, the CIA created a sabotage guide for citizens of France and other occupied countries. You know, to screw with the Nazis, which is…

Preface: Breaking the Consulting “Rulebook”

This may seem bold: Starting about six months ago, whenever I find myself in a room with spreadsheet/business/database people, one of the first things I tell them is that Power Pivot won’t just change their work, it will change their LIVES. That’s right – I tell them, with a straight face, that this business technology will actually make them happier.

That violates one of the unwritten rules of consulting, which is to underpromise and overdeliver – set expectations low enough that no one ever has reason to complain or be disappointed.

I understand why it’s traditionally a good practice to “set the bar low.” I get it. I truly do.

“Consumer with Choices” vs. “Empowered Producer” is a BIG Difference

But Power Pivot is different. Yes, in the truly breakthrough, transformational sense – you knew I was going to say that. But different in another critical sense as well – it requires (and incents!) the analyst types on the Business side to participate to a degree unlike with any other BI tool.

No matter how they are marketed, every other BI tool I have ever seen treats the business user as a glorified Consumer. Yes, Business Objects and Cognos for sure, but I’m also looking at you, Tableau and Qlikview and Spotfire.

One of my Intro “Slides” for Next Week(“Slides” in quotes because the live version is animated) I’ve mentioned before that I am speaking at the 2nd annual PASS Business Analytics Conference, aka BACON, and I’ve also mentioned that I’m…

They may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom Self-Service BI and Power Pivot.

Brief Intro from Rob: Tim has a great “backstory.” He found out about Power Pivot in the “usual” way – via a completely random coincidence. I taught a private class to a firm here in town a couple years back, and one of the attendees (a guy named Andy) lived a few houses down the street from Tim. Sitting outside at a summer barbecue, Andy mentioned Power Pivot to Tim, Tim said “what’s that?” and six months later Tim was a speaker at our Modern Excel User group. I think he has some very interesting things to say here – very introspective and honest. Worth a read for everyone.

Take it away Tim…

I’ve been thinking lately about Self-Service BI and barriers to entry. Now, when it comes to Self-Service BI, much of the focus is on the technology. Do you want to go with Microsoft, Tableau, something else? It seems to me like most of the content on the subject of Self-Service BI is focused on comparing the different technology offerings. I personally don’t know much about the gory details related to the technology behind these products, but I do think that too much attention is given to the technology and not enough attention is given to the people.

In my opinion, PEOPLE are the biggest barrier to entering the Self-Service BI age, not technology. Note: for the purposes of this post, I’m going to focus on Power Pivot since this is appearing on a Power Pivot blog.